Heuristic cues — response time, familiarity, problem complexity, and context reinstating — guide opting-out decisions¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2024 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Familiarity discourages opting out: participants opted out less in recognition tests for primed than unprimed words, consistently across seven experiments. → Yael Sidi · Rakefet Ackerman 2024 q2 i? Greater problem complexity leads to more time and moves before opting out, an inefficient pattern; context reinstating reduces "don't know" responses while increasing wrong answers. → Yael Sidi · Rakefet Ackerman 2024 (2)

Evidence¶

Yael Sidi · Rakefet Ackerman 2024¶

Yael Sidi · Rakefet Ackerman. (2024). Opting Out as an Untapped Resource in Instructional Design: Review and Implications. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09879-w

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports, citing Hanczakowski et al. (2013), a priming manipulation in word learning and recognition tasks: "Consistently across seven experiments, participants opted out less in recognition tests when facing primed compared to unprimed words".

"Consistently across seven experiments, participants opted out less in recognition tests when facing primed compared to unprimed words, indicating that familiarity discourages opting out."

Yael Sidi · Rakefet Ackerman 2024 (2)¶

Yael Sidi · Rakefet Ackerman. (2024). Opting Out as an Untapped Resource in Instructional Design: Review and Implications. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09879-w

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports, citing Krogulska et al. (2020), that context reinstating for unanswerable questions "reduces the frequency of "don't know" responses while increasing the occurrence of wrong answers". Payne and Duggan (2011) found more complex water jar problems led to more time and moves before opting out.

"Krogulska et al. (2020) found that context reinstating (e.g., reminding peripheral details from the learning context) for unanswerable questions reduces the frequency of "don't know" responses while increasing the occurrence of wrong answers."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Adults opt out of answering more on trials they later answer incorrectly, and curiosity is higher on opted-out trials (metacognitive control) — related
• Adults' confidence judgments track answer accuracy: confidence is higher on correct than incorrect general-knowledge trials (metacognitive monitoring) — related
• Opting out has disadvantages: it can obscure implicit knowledge, enable excessive opting out, and complicate assessment — related
• Opting out can improve thinking efficiency by cutting wasted effort on doomed attempts — related
• Participants' feedback-skipping decisions diverge from the optimal computer algorithm: they skip after some incorrect responses and fail to skip after many correct responses — related
• The opt-out and curiosity–accuracy findings replicate in a larger UK sample (Experiment 3A) — related
• Opting out of tasks can indicate effective effort regulation, not merely low motivation (Sidi & Ackerman, 2024 review) — related